Student project blog exploring the themes of anxiety and how it can be understood and portrayed through symbolism.
Semester 2 project at Duncan and Jordanstone college of art.

Friday, 25 January 2013

Research - George Federic Watts

"I paint ideas, not things.
I paint primarily because I have something to say, and since the gift of
eloquent language has been denied to me, I use painting; my intention is not so
much to paint pictures which shall please the eye, as to suggest great thoughts
which shall speak to the imagination and to the heart and arouse all that is
best and noblest in humanity."

George Frederic Watts, (23 February 1817 – 1 July 1904) was a popular English Victorian painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.

Watts was a modest, hard-working
artist who twice refused a baronetcy and other honours, including an offer to
become president of the Royal Academy, although he did accept the Order of
Merit. His work as a sculptor exists in the Cecil Rhodes Memorial, Cape Town.
His chief work as a sculptor is the heroic figure of a man on horseback known
asPhysical Energy, casts
of which are on the Cecil Rhodes estate and in Kensington Gardens, London.

A portrait painter and sculptor,
George Frederick Watts was born in London, the son of a piano maker. Initially,
he wanted to become a sculptor, and at the age of 10 was apprenticed to William
Behnes. However, in 1835, at the age of 18, he went to the RA Schools, where he
remained for only a short period, and thereafter was mainly self-taught. After
he first exhibitedThe Wounded
Heronat the Royal Academy,
painting became his main preoccupation. When his pictureCaractacuswon a £300 prize, he used the money to
finance a trip to Italy, where he stayed with friends in Florence. He did not
return to England until 1847, when his paintingAlfredwon the first prize of £500 in a House
of Lords competition.

In 1850 Watts visited the home of
Valentine Prinsep's parents in Holland park, supposedly for a three-day visit,
but instead he stayed for thirty years. The Prinseps seem to have borne the
situation cheerfully, and it no doubt gave them a certain cachet in the
Bohemian circles in which they moved, which included such writers and painters
as Thackeray, Dickens, Rossetti and Burne-Jones. Fortunately, Watts was a man
of frugal habits. Although he had been depressed and unhappy when he had moved
in with the Prinseps, Watts blossomed in this strange household, where notable
writers and painters were treated with reverence.

As a portrait artist, his
gallery of eminent Victorians is unsurpassed: included among his sitters were
the poets Tennyson, Swinburne and Browning, the artists Millais, Lord Leighton,
Walter Crane and Burne-Jones; others were Sir Richard Burton, John Stuart Mill
and Garibaldi, to mention only a few. He finally left the Prinseps' home in
1875 and moved to the Isle of Wight. In 1864 Watts married the actress Ellen
Terry, who was only 16, although the marriage was short-lived, and he remarried
in 1886 when he moved to Limnerslease, near Guildford. His new wife was Mary
Fraser-Tytler, thirty-two year his junior. She was of Scottish descent, growing
up in a castle on the shores of Loch Ness, and was an artist in her own right.

Some examples of his work

Death crowning innocence1899

Death, Time and Judgment 1870-1886

Eve Repentent1875

Love and Death 1874-77

The critic G.K. Chesterton said
of Watts: ".. more than any other modern man, and much more than
politicians who thundered on platforms or financiers who captured continents,
[Watts] has sought in the midst of his quiet and hidden life to mirror his
age... In the whole range of Watts' symbolic art, there is scarcely a single
example of the ordinary and arbitrary current symbol.... A primeval vagueness
and archaism hangs over the all the canvases and cartoons, like frescoes from
some prehistoric temple. There is nothing there but the eternal things, day and
fire and the sea, and motherhood and the dead."

Another contemporary admirer,
Hugh MacMillan, wrote that Watts "surrounds his ideal forms with a misty
or cloudy atmosphere for the purpose of showing that they are visionary or
ideal.... His colours, like the colour of the veils of the ancient tabernacle,
like the hues of the jewelled walls of the New Jerusalem, are invested with a
parabolic significance.... To the commonest hues he gives a tone beyond their
ordinary power... Watts is essentially the seer. He thinks in pictures that
come before the inward eye spontaneously and assume a definite form almost
without any effort of consciousness."

Watts' declared aims were clear:
to paint pictures that appealed 'to the intellect and refined emotions rather
than the senses':

Hope 1885

Before this project I had not heard of Watts but I can not help but feel I have seen his images either in passing or by the subconscious. His paintings are so dramatic but soft and gentle in the way he paints his figures and their expressions. They have a dream like quality but are very realistic and incredibly clever. His paintings have very heavy symbolism in them portraying Watt's feelings and messages he felt towards issues in his life or the world around him. Especially being an artist in the Victorian era he would paint everyday things such as poverty but make it beautifully melchonlgic using symbolism and his own views.

One of his most famous paintings
is that of Hope this painting is of a fragile and possibly blind female figure
on top of the world holding a harp. In a sense it could be portraying Hope as a
human form and how tragic the condition is of this human impulse. That hope is
so fragile and seems to hold on in the human condition despite the state of the
human or the world in question. That the girl still holds on strong to the harp
with the single string even though she appears to be weak, blind and vulnerable.
The palette of the piece is quite dark and sets a very dark mood that adds to
the fragility of the figure. The dusty colours of the earth and the background
suggest a dry, dusty, planet where life might be minimum or dying. But the
lighter colours upon the figure seem to show further the single ray of light in
amongst the dark and dust this is hope.

The title suggests it self that
it is truly optimistic piece showing the true perseverance of the human
condition and psyche. Many people have been inspired by this painting
especially those in crisis including Holocaust survivors. Hope is a universal
ideal shared by the world which makes this image so powerful and haunting.
Because of Watt's moving and clever imagery I felt greatly inspired and
enlightened by learning about his work and the symbolism within it. This is why
I have used his work as part of my research as I wish to create beauty from the
negative and the anxieties.